


Cold Day In The Sun

by luninosity



Series: Holiday Fic [6]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Charles's Unhappy Childhood, Dark!Charles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Father's Day, First Kiss, First Time, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Past Abuse, Protective!Erik, Protectiveness, Redecorating, Summer, Thunder and Lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Father's Day (written April 2012); some discussion of abuse during Charles’s childhood, some not-very-explicit sex, the possibility (doesn’t actually happen, or only in discussion) of dark!Charles, protective Erik again, redecoration and renovation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Day In The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Part six of the Holiday Fic! Title and opening lines from the Foo Fighters song "Cold Day In The Sun".

_don’t be afraid_  
 _’cause you’re not the only one_  
 _you’re not the only one_  
 _I know_

There are many rooms in the Xavier mansion. Some of them are never opened.

Erik hates unopened doors. Secrets hide behind them. Mysteries. And what he doesn’t know, what he hasn’t prepared himself to fight, might kill him.

He spends much of the first few weeks seeking out those closed doors, in odd hours, when not training or eating or being surprised by Charles’s after-dinner invitations to chess.

Charles invites him into the study, for chess, frequently. At first shyly, as if he’s not certain Erik will come, as if he’s coaxing a wild animal to his hand—Erik’d caught himself thinking that simile, and then snorted, mentally; must’ve been Charles’s fault somehow. He, Erik, does not employ figurative language.

Charles does. Charles loves linguistic intricacies and words and wordplay. So obviously Charles must have been projecting, and Erik needs to lecture him more about self-control.

He conveniently ignores the fact that he, Erik, does in fact enjoy linguistic intricacies and words and wordplay as well, in multiple languages. After all, he’d never picture himself as a hesitant stray tomcat.

Maybe a lion, though. With fangs. And very sharp claws.

The invitations, once Charles realizes that Erik never says no, come more and more often, until they actually stop coming at all and Erik just follows blue eyes up to the cozy book-lined room after dinner without ever thinking twice.

He’s a little shocked when he realizes what he’s doing, but he tells himself that he’s only taking advantage of Charles’s kindness, that he doesn’t really need the razor-sharp debates over individual versus community rights, or the brilliant challenge of a mind that can compete with his over a chessboard, or the sparkling eyes that beckon him into inside jokes when Charles tells stories, self-deprecatingly, about unbelievable events at Oxford parties. Erik often scoffs at him incredulously—no one person, especially not someone so tiny, can drink _that_ much, surely—and then encourages him to keep talking because he likes the way Charles laughs when Erik rolls his eyes.

He can stop whenever he wants. Really. Honestly. He can.

And all the closed doors prove innocuous, initially. Closets. Spare bedrooms. A dust-covered ancestral wine cellar in which entire tribes of oenophiles could become happily, drunkenly, lost.

Charles laughs delightedly when Erik mentions this last discovery, and then finds a flashlight and goes on a wine-finding expedition, returning with bottles so old they might’ve been left by the builders of the house, and Erik tastes every single one because Charles keeps opening them and trying to pontificate about the notes and the bouquet and the texture, and Erik is too caught up in blue eyes to pay attention to whatever he might be drinking.

Most of the wines are terrible. One or two are surprisingly good. Charles admits afterwards that he knows nothing about wine, or next to nothing—“It was the sort of thing I should’ve learned, probably, considering the social circles in which my family liked to move, but I never cared, or rather I only cared about how effective the alcohol was likely to be”—and Erik, also somewhat inebriated by this point, observes, “You sounded very…believable. I believed you,” and then realizes that he’s far worse off than he thought, and also that he needs a much broader English vocabulary.

Perhaps he should start carrying a dictionary, when drunk. It might help. With the words. Because dictionaries have words.

Words like _lips_ , and _laughter_ , and _lust_.

“Dictionaries do have words,” Charles says, “that’s the point of dictionaries, isn’t it? I can find one for you. I’m certain we have at least one somewhere around this place. Also, I suppose I wasn’t entirely inventing it _all_. Couldn’t help absorbing a bit of that, growing up. Sorry.”

“For what,” Erik says, because even though he quite appropriately mocks Charles’s privileged upbringing from time to time, there’s an odd note to those comments, buried between the vowels and consonants. And he doesn’t want Charles to apologize for tidbits of knowledge that he likely couldn’t help picking up.

“And also you don’t need to find me a dictionary. I am perfectly capable of locating my own words.” Or not.

But Charles laughs again, and any bitterness dissolves from his voice in the effervescence of the sound, and Erik opens another bottle just by looking at it and it turns out to be delicious and Charles never answers his question. Erik only realizes this the morning after, when he’s woken up alone in his bed with only the drum parade inside his skull for company.

Charles grins at him, over eggs, and says, “Here, I’ve found you something,” and tosses a book across the table at him. It nearly lands in said eggs, because Charles has terrible aim even without a hangover, but Erik has well-honed reflexes and so preserves both the book and breakfast.

It’s a dictionary. Of course it is.

Erik sighs. Doesn’t smile, at least not outwardly. And Charles says, brightly, “Perhaps next time you can find the mythical Prohibition-era smugglers’ cache, I’ve always wondered what real bathtub gin tasted like,” and Erik says, “You wonder about some very bizarre subjects, Charles,” and determinedly avoids placing the words _Charles_ and _bathtub_ in any sort of proximity in his thoughts.

And the days, and evenings, go by.

This particular evening is a too-hot summer evening, all of them lying listlessly around the kitchen because that’s where the ice-cubes exist. Hank is talking, casually, about some new technique of cerebral mapping, and Charles is listening and nodding—Raven’s reading a magazine, and Sean’s just fallen asleep, not even pretending to care—and Erik is watching Charles, because he always finds himself watching Charles, these days.

All ten fingertips outline an elaborate shape in the heat-damp air when Charles asks a question; Erik imagines that he can see the trails, afterwards, through all the stickiness, the traces where pale skin has traveled.

Hank says, continuing some previous thought, “…oh, and tomorrow I won’t be around in the afternoon, Professor, if that’s all right, it’s Father’s Day and I’m supposed to be meeting the family for lunch, but I’ll be here in the morning, if you want to set up the—”

And Erik, because he _is_ watching Charles, is completely certain that he sees a flicker of pain across blue eyes, a split-second cold snap in the heat of the night, winter ice slicing through summer humidity.

No one else seems to have noticed. And it’s gone as quickly as it appeared. But Erik has spent his life doubting everyone except himself. He trusts what he’s seen.

Charles nods, and says, “You can take the entire day, if you’d like; I don’t expect I’ll be around, I have another project in any case,” and when Hank asks what that is, Charles very fluently lies.

Erik knows that it’s a lie, because he’s heard Charles wax enthusiastic about this particular journal article before, over martinis and a decimated chessboard. The deadline had been two weeks ago. Charles had been in a celebratory mood. Because he’d finished on time.

Hank, who is not privy to this bit of information, makes interested noises, and Charles keeps chattering away and Erik stares until Charles glances in his direction, and the stream of words falters, for just a second, then resumes.

_You’re lying to that boy_ , Erik says.

_I am not. Nothing I’ve told him has been a lie._

_By omission, then. Rather unethical, coming from you._

_As if you have the right to judge me,_ Charles says, and the words are angry but the tone of his mental voice is not. Erik doesn’t know what it is, but it’s _not_ anger.

_What project do you have, then?_

_I don’t—_

_Nothing of that was a lie, you said._

_Ah._ Charles looks away. _I could lie to you now, but I’d rather not. You’d know it anyway if I tried._

_Yes._ He’s not quite sure how or why, but he knows he would.

_Then I’m simply not going to tell you._

Erik blinks. Swallows. The world, already so full of discomfort, tilts beneath him, with the flat weight of that denial. The heat sticks to his skin, accusingly.

Has he done something, said something, to make Charles shut him out? To drain all the joy from that mental voice, usually so cheerful and fuzzy as wool sweaters and tartly sweet as pineapple, and now so very one-dimensional and bleak? What can he do, what he offer, to bring that happiness back again?

_It isn’t you_ , Charles says, still talking at Hank, out loud, elsewhere. _My apologies. I’m just not…myself, at the moment. Just a bit off-balance. I didn’t realize—something surprised me, that’s all, I wasn’t paying enough attention. Don’t worry. Please._

Erik rolls his eyes. _You saying that gives me cause for worry, Charles_.

Charles just sighs, wordlessly, and it’s affectionate but there’s that indefinable other emotion behind it, something dark and foreboding that paints even the affection with ominous chiaroscuro. Erik wants to ask. It isn’t his place.

After a while Charles gets up, stretching, against the lassitude of the evening. His shirt clings to his body in ways that Erik would find distracting, and in fact does find distracting, but the needlepoint sharpnesses of worry haven’t yet gone away.

He gets up, as well. Charles looks at him with something like surprise, but then smiles. _I might not be the best of company tonight…_

Erik contemplates, and discards, several potential answers, before settling on, _You’re still better than South American drug kingpins, Charles,_ because he knows it’ll earn a noise of amusement, and it does. If only a small one.

_Thank you, Erik, I can always depend on you for a realistic assessment of my enticements,_ Charles retorts, and this time it’s Erik’s turn to laugh, because if he were ever to let slip what he actually thinks about said enticements, Charles would probably turn and run screaming from the room.

“Something entertaining?” Charles says, aloud, retreating into vocalized speech, and Erik says “Just imagining how definitively I am about to beat you at chess, I hope you are prepared for the shame and ignominy of defeat,” and Charles laughs again, and it almost sounds real.

When Erik wins, it’s not because of any clever strategies or advance imaginings. Truthfully, had this been any other night, Charles could’ve taken him apart; he’s playing that badly. Because he’s watching Charles. Who is playing even worse.

Charles smiles at him again, a little hopelessly—they both know how disastrous the game has been—and Erik wants to stay but Charles doesn’t offer him another drink or a rematch or a touch of fingertips to his arm and so he gets up, awkwardly, and leaves, because he feels like that’s what he’s supposed to do.

More accurately, he _doesn’t_ feel like that’s what he’s supposed to do—he’s supposed to be there at Charles’s side, working out how to coax a smile back into haunted eyes—but he gets the impression that Charles expects him to want to leave. So he does, in case that’s what Charles wants.

He lies in the sturdy old-fashioned bed in the room that’s down the hall and around one corner too many from Charles’s own, sweltering in the summer night, and doesn’t sleep, wondering whether he should’ve stayed.

 

The next morning dawns overcast and tense, pressure in the air, cloying heat like vertigo. The sun doesn’t even bother emerging. Just hides evilly behind the clouds and produces myriad unpleasant sensations, the centipede-legs of sweat crawling all over everyone’s skin.

Charles isn’t at breakfast. Raven is; in answer to Erik’s glance, she says, “He came down and made tea and then wandered away, I have no clue as to where,” and then gazes at the refrigerator as if wondering whether she can adjust herself to fit inside it.

Sean, out in the hallway, is phoning his own family. They seem to be very excited to hear from him. Erik catches a mention of Sean’s gratitude for a package of plastic dinosaurs, and then doesn’t bother listening any further.

He wanders into the second-floor hallway. Stops. Touches the paperclips, the ones in his pocket, because they’re humming at him forlornly. They’re the ones he’s stolen, at odd times, when leaving or arriving or just when Charles isn’t watching, from Charles’s desk, in the study.

The paperclips need reassurance. They feel unsettled. He touches them again. Thinks, _Charles?_ into the air.

At which point the door of Charles’s bedroom opens, and blue eyes and rumpled hair emerge. There are lines around those eyes, creases in the sapphires, and the hair is, if possible, even more explosive than usual.

“Erik,” Charles says, and for a second Erik thinks he might be about to say something else, the syllables on the brink of audible revelation, but no. “Are you all right? Did you need something? Because I was thinking we ought to run to the store, we might be out of ice cream, and ice cream is absolutely a necessity in this weather, and also I need tea, and—”

Charles wants to go shopping?

“…we can go. To the store. I’ll drive.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—”

“I’ve been in the car when you’ve attempted to operate it. I’ll drive.”

“Oh…fine,” Charles says, and smiles at him, and continues babbling about utterly inconsequential topics throughout the expedition, up and down cereal aisles and fruit displays, and reveals nothing about what he’s honestly thinking, about the causes behind the cracks in that jewel-bright gaze.

He does pause, fractionally, walking past the greeting-card aisle, which gleefully proclaims _It’s Father’s Day, show someone you CARE!_ in rather despairingly colorful letters. It’s not much of a pause. A tiny hitch in his next step.

Erik notices, naturally.

Father’s Day, he thinks. It’s not a holiday he’s ever celebrated. For one thing, it’s not exactly among his family’s traditions; for another, of course, his parents are…long departed. He can honor them best by avenging them, not through manufactured sentiment. He could dwell on how much he misses them—he does, a wound that, received too young, will never fully heal—but he’d rather not. He prefers to plan for the future, instead.

“Probably healthier,” Charles says, and Erik stares at him wide-eyed until he realizes that Charles is also holding two boxes of cereal. Unless Charles isn’t talking about the cereal; Erik can’t bring himself to ask.

Even though he wants to inquire: _healthier than what?_

Granted, he does know that Charles lost his own father, relatively early; that Charles grew up with a stepfather; that Charles and Raven both tend to glance away when mentioning those facts. Are there more facts? Stories he doesn’t know?

Why on earth, or anywhere else in the infinite universe for that matter, would Charles believe that Erik, of all people, has a healthier response to this particular holiday than Charles does?

Charles could’ve just been talking about the cereal, though. And in any case he’s already picked one and put it in the cart and moved on to look at tea.

Erik picks up the other box, which from the packaging is evidently filled with rainbow-hued marshmallows and giddily amorphous shapes, and hides it in their cart, under the toilet paper. Charles smiles at him, finding the box, after they make it home.

“You look tired,” Erik says. _I thought you might appreciate the marshmallows_.

“I am. I didn’t sleep very well, last night.” _Thank you, Erik_.

“You could…go rest. Or something.” _Please be all right_. The sincerity of it catches them both off-guard, and Charles blinks, then recovers, and smiles again.

“I think I might do that. Thank you again.”

“Go,” Erik tells him, “I’ll finish putting this away,” and Charles nods. “Don’t let anyone burn down the mansion, while I’m not awake.”

“I think we’ll manage,” Erik says, “though I can’t speak for the safety of your rosebushes, I believe I saw Sean outside attempting to imitate a pterodactyl,” and Charles leaves the kitchen on a wave of laughter, after all.

Erik finishes putting away the groceries—not a chore he minds, really, he likes tidiness in his life, no loose ends—and then finds himself at a momentary loss for things to do. He can’t go disturb Charles, no matter how much he misses the presence of a melodic Oxford accent and untamable hair at his side. He can be perfectly content with his own company. He _can_. And Charles needs the rest.

There are one or two closed doors, in the mansion, that he hasn’t yet explored. He can tell which ones they are without looking; the locks he’s opened already always recall his touch, and their metal voices are familiar. He looks for the unfamiliar and potentially guarded spots, instead. And goes off to the third floor to explore.

The room he discovers feels neglected. No one’s turned that lock, put a hand on that doorknob, in years, he’s sure. Keeping private whatever’s beyond.

Erik’s never been much for respecting privacy, other than his own, of course. He needs to know. Needs to find out, if there are monsters, dangers, potential menaces that might catch him unaware. He charts his life in missions and escape routes, one goal and one victory at a time.

So he stares at the aged mechanism of the lock until the metal spins and purrs and slides open, and steps inside.

He’s not certain what he’s expecting, but the quiet gloom of an unused study, all dust and dim grey afternoon lighting, isn’t it.

There’s a desk, solid dark wood, no doubt as historic as the rest of the house; a leather-covered chair, worn over the years into a single indentation, holding the shape like a memory. It sits there pushed slightly back from the desk, as if the occupant’s just now gotten up and gone out for tea, for something he’d forgotten.

The books, on the silent shelves along the wall, are covered in dust, too. Erik doesn’t touch them, doesn’t disturb the heavy immobility of the room. He’s good at not leaving evidence behind.

It’s not like Charles to leave books alone to molder in stillness.

He studies the desk. It gazes up at him, unhelpfully smooth. The flatness of that surface, furry with all the dust, gives nothing away. The curtains hang motionlessly over the window, drawn back as if poised to pounce.

All the detritus of neglect, accumulated over years, suggests, not kindly, that he leave.

He takes a small step back, and the carpet gives way softly beneath his feet, still luxuriously plush, a soft maroon shade that for some reason makes Erik think of blood. Old blood, the color of rust, over lingering scars.

He takes another step back, and then one more, and closes the door behind him and lets the lock tumble back into place, and when his eyes finally meet that horizonless blue gaze, at dinner, across spaghetti and garlic bread, he can’t help wondering.

Charles looks away, and doesn’t say anything, and Erik doesn’t know whether Charles has read the question in his thoughts or just isn’t in the mood and would rather chase the closest recalcitrant meatball around his plate with his fork.

Charles doesn’t actually eat the meatball. Erik is once again watching, and he’s quite certain that Charles doesn’t eat anything else, after that, at all.

After dinner, under the cheerful clatter of plates and voices and the children squabbling over whose turn it is to do the dishes—it’s Sean’s, but he’s claiming that it should be Darwin’s, on the basis that only one of them can potentially adapt into an eight-armed dish-washing octopus—Erik says, to those distant blue eyes, “Black, or white?” and gets a surprised glance, eyelashes flickering down and up like clouds pushed by the wind.

“Ah…black. Now?”

“Really? And, why not now?” Charles almost always plays white, for reasons ranging from board-control strategy to color preference to impatience about making the first move, eagerness that Erik shouldn’t find enthralling but is drawn to anyway.

“I can’t be unpredictable, once in a while? And now is perfectly fine. Although the study is a disaster; I feel that I should warn you in advance. There might be more than a few books on your chair.”

“So not very different from every day, then.” _Your_ chair, Charles’d said. Erik’s chair. Erik has a chair, in Charles’s study. He wants to be alarmed by that—this isn’t his home, it can’t be—but instead he wants to smile, and he isn’t entirely sure why, except that he’s gotten Charles to smile again, too, by asking that first question, and so even the sticky night air feels more friendly against his skin.

Charles wins. It’s a better game than the last one, though still not up to their normal standards. Charles isn’t playing like himself—much more ruthlessly than usual—and Erik’s thrown off by those tactics and never quite learns to compensate.

This time, when he starts to think that maybe he should leave, Charles says, “Drink?” and Erik says “Yes, of course” more quickly than he ought to, out of relief. Charles isn’t happy again, not yet, but he’s asking Erik to stay and thinking stray thoughts— _I don’t want to be alone_ —that burst through Erik’s head and fade like exploded fireworks in the sky.

Erik stays until he realizes that Charles is falling asleep in his sinfully opulent chair, one hand curled loosely around the martini glass, expressive hair cascading exhaustedly into those eyes. The eyes open again, belatedly, when Erik moves.

_I wasn’t asleep._

_Yes, you were._ “Come on. Bed.”

“Oh, all right…” Followed by some inarticulate telepathic grumbling about Erik and protectiveness and being taken care of; but Erik has the impression that Charles doesn’t actually mind.

He walks Charles to his room, carefully, keeping one arm poised to support tired shoulders in case Charles falls over along the way, and the other hand resolutely out of his pocket, where he’s just added two more paperclips to the collection. They’d wanted to come along.

And then he waits while Charles smiles at him from the doorway, and then retreats before anyone can hear any thoughts about blue eyes and silk sheets and beds, and goes back to his own room for a very cold shower, battling the bone-deep heat of the night and his own desires.

Erik can’t sleep. It’s not just that it’s hot—though that isn’t pleasant—but there’s more to it, a prickly compulsion running through his veins, an itch he can’t scratch inside his skin. Unnerving. Demanding that he get up, walk around, _move_.

When he thinks about blue eyes and exhaustion and those accidentally-overheard thoughts, Charles not wanting to be alone, the sense of dread intensifies, and he finds himself standing fully dressed in the hallway, before he’s even made the conscious decision to give in to all the hopefully-unjustified worry.

Or maybe it is justified. The tiny feet of anxiety scamper up and down his spine, and suggest that this might be so.

_Charles?_ he asks, and hears a silk-thin whisper of answer, in response: _In here_.

He follows the spun-gold sensation of Charles’s thoughts down hallways, around corners, up stairs; finds himself standing in front of a nightmarishly warm room, facing the open door and all the unspoken past history that no one here remembers, now. Except Charles himself, of course.

It’s the room he’d been discovering, earlier. With the carpet the color of blood.

“You can come in,” Charles says, out loud. Erik doesn’t know what that means, beyond the obvious. But he steps inside, because Charles has said he can.

It’s very dark, inside.

The windows are open, drapes pulled wide and gaping, the way they’d been that afternoon. They leer at him, as he takes another step. He ignores them. He’s only looking at Charles.

Charles is standing in front of the desk, hands in his pockets, the casual gesture somehow terribly incongruous in this grey-washed moment. He’s gazing, thoughtfully, at the carpet. He’s barefoot, and the edges of the thick weave curl up and splash red around his toes, dulled by the moonlight. He’s very still. Erik has seen this kind of stillness before, in men standing calmly before their doom. It’s peace, of a sort, but not a good sort.

“Charles,” he whispers, out loud, because he doesn’t have any other words, and Charles looks up at him with a half-smile that is not reassuring at all.

“You did find me, then.”

“Of course I did.” He takes another step. The moonlight slides along his arm, Charles’s hair, the arch of a cheekbone. It doesn’t even try to make a sound. Any noise at all, and they all might tumble from the ledge.

“That isn’t an of course,” Charles says, “it’s not a certainty,” and Erik says “Yes it is,” and catches the flash of surprised _want_ in those oceanic eyes, before Charles looks away. “You—”

_Charles_ , Erik murmurs, carefully, not out loud this time because he doesn’t trust his voice, because he doesn’t know what Charles needs, because maybe if he doesn’t have to shape audible words the emotion will spill across anyway, transformed by some mysterious alchemical process into the right collection of sounds. _Do you want to tell me?_

And perhaps it’s the sincerity of the question, or the phrasing, or the unnamed feelings behind it, but Charles turns around, a deceptively fragile silhouette in the moonlight, facing him now. Puts a hand out, and trails one eloquent finger across the desk, casually disturbing decades of dust.

“My stepfather kept this room as his study deliberately, you know.” Erik doesn’t know, or is only finding out now, but he chooses not to interrupt. He _wants_ to know. “It was my father’s study before that. None of the furnishings are his, naturally. They had very different tastes. Even the carpet was replaced. It had to be, of course.”

Erik is fighting desperately not to ask, not to step into the flow of Charles’s thoughts, but can’t help the _why?_ that drifts across his mind like surfacing debris from a wreck.

“Oh,” Charles says, and draws a second line in the dust, neatly parallel to the first. _My father shot himself in this room. In the head, in fact. Right over there._

The moonlight considerately picks out the spot of carpet where Charles is looking, and frames it in silver, just for them. And Erik catches a snapshot of memory, blood and despair and devastating abrupt emptiness, a body but nobody inside, lying carelessly crumpled on the floor. It’s Charles’s memory, he knows.

It snaps back out of his head with disorienting suddenness, like the shattering of a dream. It leaves behind absolute heartbreak, in its wake.

_Charles—_ He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. What words can possibly follow that revelation, drenched in silence and antique starlight.

_I was asleep, at first, but I could hear him—thinking—those thoughts kept turning up in my dreams. I was awake by the time he pulled out the gun and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I was in his head; I couldn’t help it. Those thoughts were—too loud to hide from. They were everywhere. I felt everything._

_Charles, my god—_

“No.” _You wanted to know, you said._

_I do._ He means those words more than he’s ever meant anything in his life. He’s never known. Never guessed. Never asked. But he very, very, desperately wants to know. The same way that his body wants oxygen, craves the song of metal, needs the swirling of iron in his veins.

“I told you that my stepfather quite liked this room. He knew I was afraid to go into it. So he redecorated. He chose the carpet himself.” Those words come with crackling images, wildfire that burns through both their thoughts: bruises on pale skin, thin young arms braced against the desk, heavy hands, the dry brittle snap of bone, more blood in a room that swallowed it all unprotestingly. _When he died, my stepbrother wanted nothing to do with the estate, and by some miraculous legal technicality I inherited everything anyway, courtesy of my mother. I never thought I’d come back here._

_Charles—I’m so sorry—_

“Oh, really, Erik, what for? You weren’t there.” _If anything I’m sorry I’ve told you. I’ve never told anyone, not even Raven, and she was there. For the last few years of it, at least._

“Charles,” Erik says, out loud, to the dull carpet and the distant stars and the sharp-edged memories, “you can tell me anything.” _And you will never need to apologize. And I am—_ He’s not sure if it’s the right word, in English. But it sounds right, for how he feels. _I am grateful that you would share this. With me. When you’ve never—_

“You know about darkness,” Charles says, and touches the desk again, and then glances at his fingertip, as if the physical reality of dust has somehow come as a surprise. _And you can keep secrets. And I trust you to keep mine._

“You shouldn’t have to—”

“Funny,” Charles murmurs, continuing the thought, “I do trust you. Imagine that.”

Erik flinches even though he shouldn’t: of course he’s not a trustworthy person. He’s a terrible person who’s done terrible things and will in all likelihood do them again, and so there’s no reason that Charles giving voice to that sentiment should flay his heart to ragged chunks.

“Oh…oh, Erik, no.” Charles looks as if he wants to reach out, then. Doesn’t _. I’m not astonished because of you, you see._

“Oh,” Erik breathes right back, understanding. He wants to reach out, too, or take a step nearer, over the thick red carpet that spills between them like the flood from an opened artery. He’s not certain whether Charles wants to be touched. Whether the sensation of another body beside his might be asking too much. Charles is still so peculiarly quiet. Contained. Dangerously so.

“I won’t hurt you,” Charles tells him, “probably,” and Erik says, equally honestly, “That’s not what I’m worried about, Charles,” and Charles laughs, humorlessly, and looks away.

_It’s not normally this bad. It’s just the night. And the day—I was required to celebrate Father’s Day, you understand, to tell him how thankful I was to be so well taken care of, when I wasn’t even his own flesh and blood, when my own father’d hated living with us enough to—This year I’d almost forgotten—I HAD forgotten, really, and the day surprised me. So it’s only that, I think. Being so…surprised._

And Erik invading this most brutally private of spaces, that afternoon. His intrusion, inadvertently nudging Charles to relive those memories. He doesn’t know how to begin to apologize. He’d not known, but that’s no excuse.

He can’t imagine what Charles had felt, then, in the blackness of that deadly moment, and through all those long intervening years that even at a glimpse sear and sizzle inside his head. Can’t imagine how Charles has stayed _sane_.

“What makes you think I am?” Charles raises eyebrows at him. The gesture ought to be familiar. It’s not.

Erik wants to say no, wants to protest. Tries. He’s not being heard. And he’s more afraid, standing here in the abandoned room full of moonlight, than he’s ever, ever, been.

Not for himself, though. This fear isn’t on his own behalf.

“If I wanted to,” Charles says, “I could kill everyone in this house. I could tell every single mind to stop functioning, could make you believe that your lungs weren’t holding air, that your veins weren’t pumping blood. Could leave you all less than human. If I wanted to.”

“Yes,” Erik says, because that’s true, and then, “but you won’t,” because that’s true, too. It has to be.

Charles makes a tiny amused sound, and turns his head to look at the mute patch of carpet by the window. The silver light and grey shadows chase each other through his hair, across his face. “You sound so very sure.”

“I am.” _I AM._

_I’m not._

_I know._

_But you’re still here_.

“Charles,” Erik says, “where else would I possibly go?” and knows beyond doubt that Charles hears the words the way he means them, as a rhetorical question, an utter impossibility: there’s nowhere Erik wants to be, other than here. _And I know you’re not sure. But I am. So I can be sure for both of us. If you want that._

_I…_ Charles hesitates. Looks up at him. And little flickers of light swim through the depths of those drowned-sapphire eyes. _I might want that, yes. If you mean it._

“You can have anything you want from me,” Erik says, and means it, with all that he is. _Anything I can give you. Take what you need._

And Charles smiles, thin and precarious as dry tinder under desert sun. But it’s a smile, and it’s real. _Thank you._

They aren’t just words. They twine themselves into Erik’s thoughts, seeking support, wrapping slender arms around what he hopes are pillars of strength, deep-set and built of his own unshakeable conviction: Charles is a good person. Charles will never be anything less than a good person. Not perfect—neither of them is—but the darknesses only throw the light into clearer relief.

_Thank you again._

_No need. Not ever._

_I can’t say it, if I feel it?_ Aloud, Charles observes, “That’s only polite, isn’t it?” and Erik finds himself wanting to smile too, which isn’t exactly appropriate as a reaction, but those words, that _tone_. Charles is amused. Teasing him. The affection’s audible in that elegant voice.

“Politeness is overrated.” He takes a small step forward, easing closer to Charles under the pale bone-colored light. “I prefer blunt honesty.”

“Of course you do,” Charles says, still amused, “but mine was honest, as well. I appreciate you offering—I appreciate _you_.” _Very much so_.

Erik doesn’t say _I love you_ , though the thought rattles so loudly inside his head that he’s certain Charles must’ve picked it up. He’s not said those words for years. Decades. Hadn’t believed he could ever mean them again.

Except he does love Charles. He knows that with inarguable clarity, cutting cleanly through all the dreamlike haze of the night.

He loves blue eyes, and unreasoning adoration of all things pineapple; loves implausible enthusiasm and optimism and the jubilation in that voice when someone mentions Charles Darwin. Loves the hints of danger, the power, the intensity that no one else sees because Charles chooses deliberately to be, mostly, harmless. Loves the complexities, layered like the complicatedly beautiful atoms of steel and iron and nickel, smooth and polished exteriors that only give away their intricacies to a chosen few.

Charles watches him, calmly, across the twilight spaces between them. Doesn’t back away, when Erik takes another small step and ends up in front of the desk.

Doesn’t say anything, either. Which is not helpful; Erik may have just had his entire world flipped end over end with a single revelation, but that doesn’t mean he instantly knows how to express the emotion, or whether Charles could potentially feel the same.

He glances out the window, and feels the ever-present purr of paperclips in his pocket, the ones he’s taken sneakily from Charles’s desk over the weeks and months, encouraging him; and what he comes up with is, “It is after midnight, now.”

Charles blinks. Twice. “Yes?”

“So…you said the day was bad. This day. Father’s Day. But it is over.” And he hopes, desperately, that it is.

“Oh. Yes, I suppose it does mean that…and yes. Possibly it is.” And the impression Erik gets, then, is one of startlement: Charles has turned away from that spot, on the carpet, and has been studying Erik, and hasn’t thought about his father, his stepfather, in several moments. Has been thinking about Erik, instead.

_Good._

_Hmm._

_You have—you’ve been thinking about them for so long, Charles. If you want to—if you want to think about something else, today, tonight—_

_—I should think about you?_ Blue eyes meet his, across the moon-shaded space; after a heartbeat, Charles takes the few steps back over the noiseless carpet, to Erik’s side. He doesn’t look at the desk, at the lines in the dust. Only at Erik, standing there beside him.

“Charles,” Erik breathes, and doesn’t look away, gazing down into those blue-black eyes, stormy seas at midnight, electricity over the ocean. He’s never minded turbulent waters. And Charles has already saved him, once, from violent waves. This time Erik can pull him, or both of them, back up together.

On one level, he’s amazed at the strength of his own desire to get Charles to dry land. On another, deeper, truer level, he’s not surprised at all.

“Erik,” Charles murmurs in return, an answer because Erik’s just said his name, and those thundercloud eyes are right there and Erik will never know who asks _Can I kiss you?_ because they think it together, simultaneously, like the echo of the heartbeat of the world.

Charles tastes like oceans in summer, Erik decides. Like blue waves and wetness under golden and brilliant sunshine. Like saltwater and seaspray. The sweet welcome shock of cool eddies beneath sun-warmed surface-depth tides.

_That’s beautiful, Erik_ , Charles murmurs. _I love you, too_.

Erik wants to shrug away the compliment, directed as it is toward himself, but Charles means it wholeheartedly, offering the adjective as if it’s not a weakness or a source of shame. And maybe it isn’t.

In any case, Erik’s meant every word of his own thought. They both know that’s true.

_You’re beautiful. And you—you mean that, too. When you say—_

_That I love you? I do_. Charles hasn’t stopped kissing him; the conversation’s entirely in their heads. Erik is completely, brilliantly, in agreement with this turn of events.

Charles loves _him_. He would be shaking his head in disbelief, except there’s no room left for disbelief, and anyway his lips are gleefully occupied.

Charles laughs, warm against Erik’s mouth. _You can believe it. It’s true. But…Erik, you know I’m not—what you said, I’m not, you’ve seen those memories—_

_Charles,_ Erik says, _you make me happy,_ and he knows that Charles hears all the emotion under and around that simple phrase, the astonishment, the reclamation of the word, the clamour of joy. _And I have seen those memories, yes. And you are going to stop arguing and let me call you beautiful. Clear?_

Charles gasps, into the kiss, at the force of that thought; Erik whispers _Sorry_ , but takes advantage of the parted lips regardless, because they’re open for the claiming. Charles moans. Doesn’t protest the advances of Erik’s tongue, lips, teeth, the last of which earns another little gasp, so Erik nips harder at pink skin the next time.

Charles shivers, in his arms. Erik can feel all the pleasure, palpably swirling between them. Physically. Mentally. Heat that has nothing at all to do with the weather.

_Clear_ , Charles breathes, at last, quiet acquiescence that comes with a sensation akin to wonder. _Erik, you—can I ask you for something? For your help with something?_

_Of course. What do you need me to do?_

_Well…I was thinking…this house could use a bit of renovation…redecoration…_

_Some new carpeting? Different furniture, perhaps?_

_Exactly._

_Charles, we can go look at carpet samples all day tomorrow if you’d like. And I’m rather good at dismembering furniture._

“Erik, that’s a wooden desk.” _Also…thank you_.

“I am aware. You don’t imagine you’re familiar with all my hidden talents, do you? Because I’m extremely good with my hands.” _I told you not to say that. I—Charles, you know I’m honored that you’d ask._ He is.

And Charles kisses him again. And the horrible carpet and the glowering desk aren’t unimportant, now, not quite. But they are already dwindling away.

“I love you,” Charles says, out loud, and then Erik demonstrates how extremely good he can be with his hands, and Charles actually loses his balance and has to cling to Erik for support. Neither of them minds, given the cause.

_You definitely have hidden talents,_ Charles agrees. _Fortunately, so do I._

This time Erik’s the one who gasps. Inadvertently. Because Charles is very talented indeed. Erik might have to consider this a challenge. An extremely enjoyable one.

_I love you,_ he says again, very firmly, because Charles seems to like him being firm. The wordless response confirms _that_ idea very satisfactorily. _So…bedroom? Where I can offer you other things to think about?_

_Now I’m very much not arguing. Suggesting, though…_

_Oh, we’re definitely doing that. We’re doing that FIRST. And then THIS. My room, you said?_ He’d caught that one, in Charles’s thoughts. His room is further away from their current location. He knows the reasons why Charles is contemplating that option, despite all the mutual anticipatory impatience.

_Yes_.

_Yes_ , Erik says, and, several eventful minutes later, _YES_ again, when Charles says it too, and comes apart whispering his name, sight and sound and touch and taste all exploding together, turning the universe inside-out and incandescent with joy.

They fall asleep naked together. Erik puts one arm around Charles, cautiously, and then the other, and Charles leaves his head trustingly on Erik’s chest and the thoughts fade into a contented worn-out hum of satiated pleasure and then into sleep. Erik means to stay awake, because he’s still marveling at how _right_ the position feels, but Charles’s tiredness is seeping into his mind and body and he’s too relaxed to fight it for long.

He can’t even reach his pillow—they’ve knocked all the pillows onto the floor, along with most of the sheets—but he’s comfortable anyway. And they don’t need the sheets. It’s a hot night; the bedding can just lie there and be jealous, on the floor. Because he, Erik, will keep Charles safe in the circle of his arms.

 

He wakes up first, but Charles follows suit almost instantly, as if they’re attuned.

They look at each other, for a minute. Charles smiles first. It’s clear and weightless as sunbeams, a little frayed around the edges, tremulous but real.

Erik smiles back. So do his paperclips, even though no one can see them, in the pocket of his abandoned pants on the floor. None of them minds where they’ve ended up. Not in the least. “Good morning.” _How are you?_

“Good morning. Um…I could probably use some tea.” _And…better. You—well, you were incredible, of course, that was stupendous—but I don’t just mean that about the sex. Everything before that—everything you said—it IS better, this morning. I’m better. Thank you._

_I’m glad_. “I can make you tea, if you want that. You can even stay here. In bed.”

“Not going to turn down such a tantalizing offer, but not yet. I want you to stay here, for a few minutes.” _You feel good, holding me. And I think I’m happy. And I love you._

_I love you._ Quiet, for a few moments, in which clouds gather peacefully outside the windows and the scent of rain arrives, a promise of reprieve in the air.

As the first drops start to patter against the windows, Erik hesitates, then says, over the noise, “You would be a good father,” and Charles sits up, wide-eyed with shock.

“ _What_?”

“Come back here. Please.” His arms miss the solid warmth already. The rain taps wistful fingers over the glass, and the droplets slide down and pool like tears and drip from the eaves into the bushes below.

“I’m sorry, did you just say—why would you say—” _You know I—I told you about—those are not precisely good examples to follow!_ Beneath the shock there’s a curious sense of betrayal, as if Erik hasn’t followed the expected script, hasn’t fallen in line with Charles’s certainty on this point.

But he’s never been good at falling in line with expectations. And Charles is, once more, wrong about himself. And Erik can also never resist telling Charles when he’s wrong.

And telling Charles he’s wrong now might possibly help make something right. Possibly, he thinks again. Mentally crosses his fingers.

_Erik, I—_

_First, I love you. Second,_ _what is it that you think you’re doing now? With Alex, and Sean, and Angel, and the others?_

_I—you—that’s different, that’s—_

_Charles, they adore you. And you want them to be all that they’ve ever dreamed they could be. You tell them that they have possibilities. And of course you aren’t perfect—you’re far too kind to them and you like them to think that you know everything, which we both know you don’t—_

_Thank you for that._

_I am making a point, Charles._ “And we said you weren’t going to argue with me. About this, anyway. I enjoy you arguing with me about everything else.”

“ _We_ did not. _You_ did.” _But…I agree with your last two sentences. Go on._

“You aren’t perfect, but you make them want to be better people simply by asking them to be. Because you believe in them.” _And you…make me want to be one of your better people, as well. To be what you need._

“Me…as a father. Of children. I’d give them lectures on genetics,” Charles says, slowly, but the rain is dancing outside the windows and the beat of it is beginning to be echoed way back in those tangled sapphire eyes, “and expect them to be chess masters at age six and none of us would _ever_ clean our rooms…” _Erik…you ARE what I need_.

“Ah. I have seen your room. That might be a problem.” _Charles, I—love you. So damned much_.

“I know you do.” _And I love you. And…about the rooms….I can try to be tidier. If we’re going to share._

_You want to—_

“Yes?” _And this time you’re wrong about something. One thing_.

“Yes. I can learn to live with a disastrous bed and clothing on the floor and half-finished cups of tea on your nightstand.” That, or he’ll just start cleaning up after Charles. At least the tea, because that’s distracting—really, why not just finish the beverage, if one’s gone to the trouble?—and results in a shortage of mugs in the house besides.

He pictures himself collecting Charles’s discarded teacups, in the morning. Domesticity. It has an odd but definite appeal.

They can probably reach some sort of compromise about making the bed, however, since they’re going to be using it so very often.

_Agreed._

_You said I was wrong. About one thing. What am I wrong about, Charles?_

“Well, now it might be two things, once you start to regret some of those promises about cleaning our room…” _Just one small pronoun. It isn’t what I’M doing, now, with the…children. It’s what WE’RE doing. You, and I._

Erik stares. Speechless. In every way. Charles grins, through the splashing of the rain.

“The same argument applies to you, you know. The way you get them all to listen to you. Even—especially—when I _am_ too nice. The way they respect you. And…what you did for me, last night…” A flash of memory, vivid as lightning: strength, offered and accepted and freely given and shared. Respite. Love. _That was—no one’s ever done that for me. Until you. You make me better, as well. Or we make each other better, perhaps._

_We._ Erik knows he’s smiling. Probably too broadly. Doesn’t care. Charles has said _we_.

So he answers _yes_ , because that’s one more true word in a world full of truths, now, between them. And then, because it’s raining more heavily and Charles might be cold, “Do you want me to make you tea now?”

And Charles laughs, in time with the rhythm of the storm. Says, “I want you to make me tea later, Erik, at the moment I just want _you_.” And lets Erik pull him back down into encircling arms, while the rain billows around the aged mansion walls, the thunder laughing too.


End file.
